opinion which, as I read it, and as I
fear others will read it, seems to make it a point of honour with the
Colonists to prepare for separation, had contented himself with
resuming the statements already made in its course, with showing that
neither the Government nor Parliament could have any object in view in
their Colonial policy but the good of the Colonies, and the
establishment of the relation between them and the mother-country on
the basis of mutual affection; that, as the idea of maintaining a
Colonial Empire for the purpose of exercising dominion or dispensing
patronage had been for some time abandoned, and that of regarding it
as a hot-bed for forcing commerce and manufactures more recently
renounced, a greater amount of free action and self-government might
be conceded to British Colonies without any breach of Imperial Unity,
or the violation of any principle of Imperial Policy, than had under
any scheme yet devised fallen to the lot of the component parts of any
Federal or imperial system; if he had left these great truths to work
their effect without hazarding a conjecture which will, I fear, be
received as a suggestion, with respect to the course which certain
wayward members of the Imperial family may be expected to take in a
contingency still confessedly remote, it would, I venture with great
deference to submit, in so far at least as public feeling in the
Colonies is concerned, have been safer and better.

[Sidenote: 'Separation' and 'annexation.']

You draw, I know, a distinction between separation with a view to
annexation and separation with a view to independence. You say the
former is an act of treason, the latter a natural and legitimate step
in progress. There is much plausibility doubtless in this position,
but, independently of the fact that no one advocates independence in
these Colonies except as a means to the end, annexation, is it really
tenable? If you take your stand on the hypothesis that the Colonial
existence is one with which the Colonists ought to rest satisfied,
then, I think, you are entitled to denounce, without reserve or
measure, those who propose for some secondary object to substitute the
Stars and Stripes for the Union Jack. But if, on the contrary, you
assume that it is a provisional state, which admits of but a stunted
and partial growth,